Pre-combustion chamber assemblies have been used in internal combustion engines to ignite gaseous fuels for quite some time. Such pre-combustion chamber assemblies typically utilize a sparkplug to ignite the fuel and air mixture in a pre-combustion chamber located in the pre-combustion chamber assembly. The sparkplug is exposed to the pre-combustion chamber in order to ignite the fuel and air mixture injected therein. The temperature in the pre-combustion chamber is extremely hot which is detrimental to the life of the sparkplug. As a result frequent sparkplug replacement is necessary.
It would be beneficial to reduce the temperature of the pre-combustion chamber in order to increase the life of the sparkplug. However, such a reduction would be detrimental to combustion and internal combustion engine operation. Incomplete combustion would result in higher levels of nitrous oxide emissions and engine operating inefficiencies.
Attempts to reduce the temperature of the sparkplug in an area of the electrode of the sparkplug have been pursued. As a result the life of the sparkplug is short and internal engine downtime for replacement is frequent.
The present invention is directed at overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.